In The Grasp of the Wraith

The United States of America spends a enormous amount of money on foreign aid but most Americans are unaware of precisely which countries that (heavily taxpayer funded) money is being given to or in what proportion. When asked the question: Which country receives the greatest largess from US foreign aid, most people reply along the lines of, “Africa?” or “Maybe Britain,” or perhaps, “Someplace in the Middle East?” Wrong on both counts.

Israel.

The United States of America has provided more financial foreign aid to the State of Israel than any other country by a large portion. Current estimates put US spending in foreign “aid” to Israel at $3 billion annually. Yes, you read that right, annually, as in, every single year. That totals around 9% of the total US foreign aid budget.

Politically apathetic US citizens might respond, “So what? Who cares?” Still others who are more hip to the mainstream will respond, “Yes but Israel needs that money. Besides they are our greatest ally.” Needless to say, none of these are particularly solvent responses. To address the first response, you might not well care about politics but politics, you can rest assured, is ever interested in you. To address the latter response, Israel, by every empirical metric, is by no means our (that is, the US’s) greatest ally. Indeed, popular American opinion is not anywhere near as chipper as one might assume if one gets all of their information from mainstream news.

Nor is Israel in anyway a important “strategic” asset (the country is tiny and militarily significant only because of its blatant disregard for the NPT – nuclear non-proliferation treaty – and US indifference to that fact). In fact, retired US army Colonel, Larry Wilkerson – a man who spent the majority of his life studying geopolitical strategy – is on the record as saying that,

“Israel no longer provides the United States a strategic value like it did during the Cold War. Not only that, Israel is a strategic burden on the United States.” [Lt. Col. L.B. Wilerson, 2007, Endgame: A Future Scenario for Israel.]

There is then the cry of, “But Israel and the US share similar values!” Absurdity incarnate. Israel is, in no uncertain terms, a militarily expansive/aggressive ethnostate (it is in such discussions that white nationalists are on their best footing). It was founded specifically as a Jewish State, for Jews by Jews. Non-Jews who are allowed residency (there aren’t many) are quite literally second class citizens for no other reason than that they aren’t Jewish; a striking contrast to American quasi-meritocratic, yet largely equalitarian, beliefs (which are, ostensibly, US values, broadly speaking, whether you agree with them or not). At this point we haven’t even touched upon Israel’s continual creation of illegal settlements in Palestinian lands… but who cares about them bulldozing the house of some distant desert people anyways? #standwithisrael

Given the aforementioned contentions the discerning American citizen might rightly ask why there is such a concerted effort to fund and continuously, unquestionably, support Israel? One word.

AIPAC.

The acronym stands for the American-Israeli Public Affairs Committee which is a Zionist, rabidly pro-Israel lobbying group and one of the most powerful lobbying groups in the entire country (Brad Sherman a Dem of the US House of Representatives has called the group, “the single most important organization in promoting the U.S.-Israel alliance.”

To be sure, it would be overly reductionist to place all the blame on the lobbying group (there is also the Biblical mandate invoked by men such as Pastor John Hagee, a belief that Jews are “God’s chosen people” and that the land of Israel belongs to them by divine right) but AIPAC is certainly the leader in the so-called “Jewish Lobby” (a misnomer, but we’ll get to that later) along side ZOA (Zionist Organization for America), AJC (the American Jewish Congress), COP (Conference of Presidents [of other Jewish Organizations]), the ADL (Anti-Defamation League) and numerous others.

The organization is so powerful, in fact, that, to a large degree, it can control who gets in (and stays in) the US congress. Despite mainstream liberal detractors of the organization who criticize it for being “in bed” with the GOP, AIPAC’s only loyalties lie with Israel and the biggest donor or donors who can furnish it.

To illustrate this point consider the curious case of Earl Hilliard, a US congressman from 1991-2002. Mr. Hilliard has opposed a AIPAC supported resolution which pushed for heavy sanctions on Libya which Mr. Hilliard opposed. Due this infidelity, Mr. Hilliard was promptly targeted by a ludicrous smear campaign which declared that he supported and financed Osama Bin Laden and Saddam Hussein and also alleged that the congressman was complicit in a vast “terror network.” Needless to say, Mr. Hilliard lost his next election by no small margin. Then there is the case of Mr. Kenneth Roth of Human Rights Watch, who, for the inexcusable crime of taking the Israeli government to task over “human rights violations” during the Second Lebanon War (2006, Israel v. Hezbollah), was hideously smeared in the American press as a “anti-Semite” – a queer charge given that Mr. Roth is, himself, Jewish (to say nothing of the fact that Arabs are also Semitic people). He was also accused of blood libel (no, really, its true). Then there is the case of the Psychology Professor, Kevin B. Macdonald who criticized Israel and the Israeli lobby and was, like Roth, summarily slandered as a Jew hater. Then there is the case of John J. Mearsheimer and Stephen M. Walt of the influential political report, The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy; both accused of racism and Jew hatred. The list of such incidents of coercion goes on and on, “coincidence” after inconvenient “coincidence,” such that whole of it takes the form of an obvious concerted effort with AIPAC and its satellites dutifully pulling the strings to protect the promised land.

It is useful here to note that though many rabidly conjecturing racialists (of a deeply entrenched ideological persuasion) will view such criticism as, “Naming The Jew,” they are woefully mistaken. The reason why (aside from the obnoxious phraseology) is that AIPAC and the Jewish Lobby (a more accurate term would be “Zionist Lobby”) at large does not represent the majority of American Jews (sometimes they are even at odds with their kinsmen in Israel!) as is evidenced by numerous surveys, chief among which is a 2013 study conducted by the Pew Research Center. The study showed that only 18% of American Jews belonged to ANY Jewish organizations and that 82% of American Jews belonged to NO organizations at all. Additionally, 70% of American Jews were “not at all” attached to Israel, 57% had never traveled to Israel and 44% believed settlement building of any kind by Israel was a terrible idea. These response put the vast majority of American Jews collectively at odds with AIPAC and the other pro-Zionist lobbying groups. And they should be, like all Americans.

To recap, Israel (represented by proxy groups like AIPAC and the Zionist Lobby):

Continues to build illegal settlements and maintain a literal and brutal forced apartheid state

Is starkly at odds with American values.

Regularly and viciously persecutes any and all individuals who criticize Zionist/neocon policy.

Provides no strategic value to the United States of America.

In summation, my fellow Americans, for the sake of the besieged Palestinians, the socially ostracized critics of Israel, your taxpayer dollars and the protection of our borders and our troops abroad, oppose and bring to attention the actions of AIPAC and the Zionist lobby at every conceivable turn. For if a nation is to be truly sovereign it must have total control over, not just its borders, but the instruments of policy making within them.